Once again we made our yearly trek to DC to work with ACT on issues that affect our development community. This year we focused primarily on Mobile Privacy, STEM, H1-B Visas, Intellectual Property, Robust Networks. While our group is International, many of the issues covered were specific to US concerns. However Privacy and IP affect all of us. It was great to see so many people from our community. We had a strong presence this year.

I'm headed to Washington on Sunday as part of the Association for Competitive Technology's Annual Fly-In. Our group of 50 tech CEOs and developers will be meeting with the DC representatives of many Silicon Valley companies to learn about the potential impact that pending government activity may have on our industry. We will also meet with our elected officials and agency staff to educate them about our businesses and how the ecosystem works.

Recently I moderated a Webinar on the future of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) with Peder MacGee of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Sara Kloek of The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). The event was hosted by LearnLaunch.org.

The event was very informative and if you are a developer of websites or mobile apps for children I think you would have found it helpful. I thought it might be helpful to recap some of the questions that were answered for me. This is not a recap of the entire webinar, rather a recap of the issues I didn't have clarity on prior to the webinar and thought may be helpful to others.

Moderating a panel on "How Ed Tech is Shaping The Way Youngsters Learn" on November 14 in Boston. If you have questions or topics for me to cover I'd love to hear from you. It would be great to see you there.

School is finishing for kids everywhere, and they are getting ready to enjoy that glorious time known as summer break. Although we want our kids to have fun and relax, teachers like me always encourage our students to do a little work over the summer so they don’t lose all that hard-earned knowledge. Summer can be a great time for students to sharpen their academic skills, or prepare for the year ahead, or catch up if they are a little behind.

Devices like the iPad and mobile phones can be excellent summer learning tools for children. Children can practice their skills or learn new concepts while at home or traveling on vacation. In order to help kick off summer, a group of educational app developers have teamed up to offer fantastic discounts on learning apps for your kids. All the apps below are created by independent parents and educators working hard to create the best learning apps for your kids.

All the apps below are on sale for this weekend only, so take advantage of the deals while they last!

This week we are releasing a fun little iPhone/iPad app that let's your family have fun coloring Halloween themed pictures while listening to some spooky sounds. Print, email or share on facebook and twitter!

On May 22, I, along with several Moms With Apps members went to DC to represent our views on the state of legislation affecting small mobile app developers. We went as guests of the Association for Competitive Technology(ACT), who had just finished testifying on Capitol Hill along with Apple, Google and others. on privacy concerns.

In the latest version of our iPhone app, "A Family Matters" families have over a hundred new questions and activities to keep them busy and entertained. We have included the most asked for category "Waiting in line". Whether you are at Disney or the movie theater, waiting in line just got a little more fun.

I decided to get an Android phone and also considered the possibility of porting my app to that platform. However even though this is my hobby, it is still time consuming so I didn't want to dive in if the platform wasn't going to be fruitful.

A massive earthquake hit Chile this week and many are dead and possibly millions are left homeless. Our hearts go out to the people of Chile. It's hard to believe that they suffered a larger hit than Haiti did. We recently had a successful charity drive for Haiti and hope to do the same now for Chile. Even though they have better infrastructure their needs are pretty great.

Due to the crisis in Haiti we have decided to donate proceeds from A Family Matters. However to make this charity drive really work we need to translate our Family-oriented iPhone application into languages other than English. If you can help please read on.

So my 7-yr old tells me the #1 thing he wants this year is an iPod Touch. My first reaction was this sounded like a bad idea. Why would a 7-yr old want or need one of these? But then it occurred to me...

This page contains a longer video demonstration of Family Matters, our application for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Here you can see the variety of activities and questions and an overview of the general philosophy that makes Family Matters great for mom, dad and the kids.

We built this application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to help us parent more effectively. We were tired of family dinners where the conversation consisted of "How was your day?"... "fine".

What Family Matters(tm) gives you is a set of questions and activities designed to help you communicate more effectively with your children. We found it leads to more and deeper conversations with our kids and we think it could do the same for you.